After sifting requests, Bloomington social services group faces $681K in needs, has just $323K to give

On Thursday night, representatives from 35 different social services agencies in Bloomington gave presentations to a committee that is made up of councilmembers and other residents, to support their applications for project funding.

The 35 agencies had applied for this year’s round of Jack Hopkins social services grants.

The total amount requested by those 35 agencies is $680,530. The amount that’s appropriated in Bloomington’s 2023 budget for Jack Hopkins grants is just $323,000.

But this year’s grant cycle started off with an even bigger challenge—48 agencies had applied for a total of about $965,000. Before Thursday’s meeting, the committee had already winnowed down the 48 applications to 35.

The total requested this year is the biggest amount since the Jack Hopkins grant program was started, in 1993.

Based on B Square records, the previous high was $822,971 in 2020. Over the last decade the amount of total requests has been about $550,000. Each year the annual budget allocation, from the city’s general fund, has been around $300,000.

The fact that requests for funding have outpaced the budget led city councilmember, and Jack Hopkins committee member, Jim Sims on Thursday to call for a big increase in Jack Hopkins funding for the 2024 city budget.

“I want our administration to immediately take up doubling the amount of Jack Hopkins funds that we have as part of future budgeting,” Sims said. He added, “Now, that’s just a suggestion, because we even need more than that.”

Sims had made the same call for a doubling of funding two days earlier, at the city council’s budget advance meeting. Bloomington mayor John Hamilton’s initial 2024 budget proposal will be made to the council in late August.

The seven-member Jack Hopkins committee will have to ratchet down the allocations even more between now and June, when the city council is set to approve the allocations.

This year’s seven-member committee is composed of councilmembers Susan Sandberg (chair), Ron Smith, Kate Rosenbarger and Jim Sims, along with Bloomington residents Tim Mayer, Mark Fraley, and Jami Scholl. Mayer is a former at-large councilmember.

Between now and May 3, committee members will make their own individual recommended allocations to the remaining 35 agencies. On May 11, the Jack Hopkins committee will meet and work through each agency’s allocation, which will be followed by a May 16 hearing on those numbers. The allocations are supposed to be put in front of the city council on June 14.

The Jack Hopkins program is named after the former city councilmember and professor at Indiana University’s public and environmental affairs, who wrote down the basic criteria for grant funding in a 1993 letter.

The resolution that named the fund after Hopkins was approved by the city council in 2002, the month after Hopkins died.

Applications for this year’s round of funding are available in two packets: Packet 1 and Packet 2.

Table: 2023 Jack Hopkins award applications
(Requests are sorted first by whether the agency was invited to present the application at the April 27, 2023 committee meeting, then by amount requested)